Bart Bear's Blog

Yay, our main dam, Googong, is finally full to overflowing. This is a very important dam, not just for Canberra but for Queanbeyan and surrounding towns in New South Wales. As luck would have it, the spillway had just been redesigned and built just before the rains came, right on time for the ultimate test of how it would work. The old spillway sent the overflow out in a huge squirt that was eroding away the river banks below the dam. The new one is much bigger at the top and sends the overflow down a series of steps so that it is a lot gentler when it hits the river. We drove out for another look at the dam on Saturday. To get a good look at the spillway I had to climb up a bit of a hill and through some scrub. I found a rock to sit on and see over the trees. The spillway looks great. No big squirt, just a series of cascades. It actually looks as good as some of the waterfalls that people rave about. After years of drought and water restrictions it is really great to see our dams all full again.

Labels: Canberra, dam, New South Wales